


Falling for a Black Cat

by aohatsu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Blood, Character(s) of Color, Clothing Kink, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, First Time, Fluff, Getting Together, Hair, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Kissing, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Rescue, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25517851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: She’s just going as Felicia’s date.It’ll be fun.And Felicia had hinted that they might piss some of the high-and-mighty off while they’re there, so it mightreallybe fun.
Relationships: Felicia Hardy/Michelle Jones, Peter Parker/Tony Stark (Background)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Red Team





	Falling for a Black Cat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



MJ wakes up to the sound of Georgette yowling and something tumbling off of the desk under the window, shattering when it hits the floor, followed by a mumbled, "Oh, shit, sorry!"

Georgette hisses threateningly before quickly disappearing under MJ's bed with a flash of yellow eyes.

She sits up and fumbles for the lamp chord.

The day starts, as seems to be usual these days, with Peter in red-and-blue skin-tight spandex, bleeding and half-delirious, lying in the middle of her floor. 

She narrows her eyes and gets up, tugging down her pajama shorts as she grabs the first aid kit off the bookshelf where she'd left it the _last_ time Peter had come over at two am, bleeding with bone sticking out of his forearm while claiming, "It'll heal, I just can't let Aunt May see it until it does. Please, MJ?"

And, well, her mom works the night shift often enough that when she _is_ home she's sleeping like the dead anyway.

"What'd you do this time?" MJ asks, and prods at the three incredibly sharp cuts on his chest. Damn, whoever he's been fighting has some serious claws--they went right through the material of his suit. (And she knows it's not actually made of spandex. It's hard to be friends with Ned Leeds and not know that sort of thing.)

"Stopped a break-in at the Met," he says, smiling goofily at the ceiling. She almost smiles back—she'd had a crush on that goofy smile of his back in junior year of high school. (Then she'd realized it came attached with a dick and really, they were just better off as friends.)

"Hand the thieves over to the cops?" she asks, and then presses an alcohol wipe to one of the cuts. He hisses and yelps, looking at her all betrayed.

"Don't be a baby."

"You did that on purpose."

"You broke my pencil holder climbing through my window at three am."

"The thief got away,” Peter explains, immediately changing the subject. MJ snorts and keeps working on the scratches. “I almost had her, but she cut through my webbing like she was ready for it. Then this happened," he adds, gesturing to his chest. "But at least she didn't get away with the painting she was after."

"I feel like I have to tell you I'm obliged to be on the female art thief's side here."

"You're the worst."

"Stop waking me up to play nursemaid on mornings when I have my early lit class and maybe I'd be nicer."

"... I'll bring you coffee later?"

"Yes you will."

Three months later, MJ meets the female art thief with the claws capable of slicing Spider-Man's suit open. 

Here's the thing: MJ hates assholes.

Reighton Labs are the biggest fucking assholes in New York. They're currently at the top of her list of favors for when Ned fucks up and owes her free only-slightly-illegal hacking work. (She'd had him and Peter try to hack Stark's systems once; a video of Stark drinking a mojito and wishing them good luck with their future criminal endeavors fucking _blue screened_ Ned's computer and Peter had had to beg Tony Stark himself to fix it, but Ned got an internship out of it so it all worked out.) Ned, thankfully, had an on-and-off-again thing with Betty that meant lots of inevitable hacking favors for MJ.

She'd called Peter after class, so pissed she could hardly see straight. Ned had made her promise not to stab anyone when he'd sent her the video, and she'd agreed before she'd seen what was on it.

Reighton Labs, those absolute soulless bastards, were experimenting with weapons on cats. There were dozens of cats in the video, shivering and hiding and crying in their massively packed, dirty cages. Some of them had clearly been mutilated, some of them were obviously sick and all of them, _every last one_ , looked like they were in overwhelming pain.

And Peter didn't answer his goddamn phone.

Well, she’s not fucking waiting.

She gets Ned to hack the Reighton Labs security system and talk her through breaking in even though he mostly uses their headphones to repeat, “This is so wrong. We’re going to get caught. We’re going to jail. I won’t survive in jail. Why aren’t we waiting for Peter? We should be waiting for Peter!” in her ear. Betty, at least, agrees that they can’t wait for Peter. She’s nervously driving the van they’d borrowed from her dad, MJ carefully fudging the license plate number with a “misplaced” bumper sticker just in case.

MJ breaks into the labs at 1:42am when the two lone security guards have gone around the building for a smoke break.

She finds the room labeled Experimental Subjects—which makes her want to hurl, seriously, “ _experimental subjects_ ”?—within a few minutes, Ned telling her which hallways to follow and doors to open in-between his panicked rants about ending up in jail before he’s even gotten married. (MJ dutifully ignores Betty’s, “Aw, babe, are you thinking about proposing?” and everything that ensues from there.)

The cages are stacked up along the far left wall, twelve of them in total though two are empty. They all have handles for easy maneuverability which MJ takes advantage of to immediately carry two of the cages back out the way she came in. The cats cry when she moves them, pitiful sounds that break her heart and make her want to fuck up the entire Reighton Labs infrastructure so hard they can never come back from it.

Which should be easy enough.

By 2:26am, MJ has scuttled around the security guards twice and loaded Betty’s dad’s van up with eight cages and twenty-something cats, some of them in serious need of medical care. Ned’s already got an emergency veterinary clinic on speed dial for when they pull out of here.

Betty throws her a thumbs up from the driver’s side window as MJ goes back in for the last two cages. She’s got them in-hand and is walking out of the experimental subjects room when Ned’s voice comes in over the headphones, high and panicked, "Oh, shit, somebody just took out the security guards! MJ, get out of there!"

The cats cry when MJ starts to run, the cages shaking in her hands. There are kittens in one of the cages, small and blind with no idea what’s happening.

Running is a useless effort though. Halfway down the first hallway, MJ has to stumble to a stop because a woman drops down in front of her out of nowhere. She tightens her fists around the cage handles.

This woman, whoever she is, is wearing a skin-tight catsuit from boots to gloves, entirely pitch black but for a line of white trim and cuffs made of white fur to match her long, white hair which has to have been dyed for the whole thematic element she’s clearly going for. She has a black mask around her eyes, and the only color she’s wearing at all is the deep red of her lipstick. She’s stupidly attractive in a terrifying sort of way, the same way you might think, “Huh, that jaguar sure is beautiful,” right before it tears your jugular out.

"And what do we have here?" the woman asks, her mouth quirked up in a smile. She glances from MJ to the cats, and then slowly draws her eyes back up over MJ’s body to look into her eyes. “A thief?”

MJ scowls.

She straightens her shoulders as much as she can and says, “Look, I don’t care about this place’s tech,” which was, admittedly, untrue. MJ had plugged the USB that would delete all their weapons research and distribute one of Ned’s nastiest and untraceable viruses into their system before she’d taken the first cats back out to the van, “so you might as well just let me get the cats out of here. They’ve been through enough.”

As if to agree with her, one of the cats lets out a miserable, beseeching meow, rubbing its face against the bars of the cage MJ is still holding by her left hand. It's getting heavier the longer she stands there, but fuck if she's putting these cats down.

One of the cats is missing a paw and has had an ear removed. They’ve been through _enough_. They don’t deserve to be left in this place to be tortured any more.

The woman stares at her, and then, like some sort of fucking miracle, says, "Well, who am I to stop a pretty girl from stealing a few cats in need of rescue?"

They way her mouth tilts at the corner and her eyes slide of MJ’s body makes MJ very conscious, suddenly, of the fact that she’s also dressed for the occasion—but in her case, she’s wearing a black beanie, an over-large black hoodie, tight black jeans and black combat boots. She even has a pair of black winter gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints behind. Her outfit is a far cry from the tailored thing the woman in front of her is wearing.

Not that that fucking matters, jeez, _get your head in the game, MJ_.

"Okay," she says. She's not about to argue with the chance to get out of there with the cats completely scot-free.

The woman’s mouth curves into a full grin, and she walks past MJ with a, “Goodbye now, little thief.”

MJ scowls all the way out of the labs where Betty and Ned are gearing up outside the van like they’re about to come charging in after her.

It's not until a day later, as she, Ned and Betty are recounting the successful mission to a recently-returned-from-Japan Peter (who still _swears_ Stark isn't his sugar daddy, but it’s not like he bought that new _custom-designed_ Japanese jacket he's wearing with his own non-existent money, so what-the-fuck-ever Peter) that MJ realizes that she'd had her very own run in with the infamous _Black Cat_.

So, that’s pretty cool.

Two days later, MJ and Peter are sitting at one of those flimsy tables with funky broken chairs at the green coffee house across from the old trade-in bookshop MJ sort-of works at on weekends, drinking coffee and discussing how close MJ came to death on her cat-rescuing mission and how, apparently, she should have waited for Spider-Man because Black Cat could have killed her and it’s not safe to do things like that by herself.

MJ very nearly throws her coffee in Peter’s face. She only resists the urge because he looks more angry at himself for having given in and gone on Stark’s last-minute Japanese hot spring trip instead of staying in New York just in case something cropped up that needed Spider-Man’s attention. Which is fucking stupid, because not only are MJ, Ned and Betty perfectly _fine_ , capable of handling their own shit, and the cats doing great now that they’re at an animal rescue hospital, but Peter deserves to have a goddamn life outside of being Spider-Man every once in a while.

She sort of wishes she hadn’t told him about it, not that Ned would have been able to keep his mouth shut so she guesses the point is moot anyway.

“Look,” she starts, for the thousandth time, “you’re allowed to go on dates. You’re allowed to—”

“Oh my God, MJ, for the last time, _I’m not dating Mr. Stark_ —”

“Balancing work and personal shit is vital, don’t you remember the lecture we got at orientation?”

“I think this is a little different. Avengers work is more—"

“If you’re about to say ‘more important’ than regular jobs, I’m about to pour this coffee over your head.”

Before Peter can respond to that particular threat, he stiffens and looks past MJ towards the entry door to the coffee shop. MJ twists around to see what’s up, and catches sight of a woman walking through the door. She’s wearing high-heeled black boots, clearly tailored tight jeans, a soft white shirt with a lounging cat printed on the breast pocket and a black leather jacket over that. Her hair is long, white, and incredibly familiar.

She tugs off her sunglasses and smirks over at MJ and Peter before stepping into the coffee line.

MJ looks back at Peter with wide eyes.

“Is that—”

“Pretty sure, yep,” Peter says, “and since she doesn’t know, uh, you know, she’s clearly here for _you_ , which means she’s _following you_ , shit, this is not good.”

MJ glances back at—well, at _Black Cat_. All dressed down and ordering coffee and, apparently, a cinnamon blueberry muffin.

Oddly enough, MJ’s not particularly scared. She looks back at Peter and says, “I’m really curious if her hair is as soft as it looks.”

Peter fumbles his coffee. “MJ! That isn’t funny.”

MJ didn’t actually mean it as a joke. The woman’s hair is long, slightly curling around her shoulders. It looks incredibly soft, just like it did the other night when MJ was distracted by the cat stealing and the potential going-to-jail or being-murdered things. The fact that it’s pure white down to the roots is pretty eye-catching too.

Then, the woman walks right over to their table, and without a by-your-leave, settles into the spare chair between MJ and Peter. She puts her coffee mug on the table, clicking her nails on the ceramic, and says, “Oh, look, it’s my little thief. I just have to ask—how are the cats?”

Peter must be feeling pretty stuck between a rock and hard place, MJ thinks, looking at his tense face. He’s such a terrible liar, it’s crazy nobody has figured out Spider-Man’s “secret identity” yet. She looks at Black Cat’s face. Her eyes are crazy green, and she’s smirking in a way that should be sort of annoying, but is really just—alluring?

MJ answers, “They’re doing great. Animal hospital is healing them up, looking for safe homes where they can learn to be normal again. Thanks for letting me get them out.”

The woman’s smirk drops, just a little, into a real smile. MJ’s breath catches and she hastily swallows a mouthful of her chocolate mocha.

“Good,” she says, softly. She leans back in her chair and the legs wobble dangerously, broken like everything else in the coffee shop, but the woman doesn’t appear to mind. “I’m Felicia, by the way. Your name is Michelle?”

Peter interrupts, “Why are you following MJ?”

MJ interrupts after him, “I prefer MJ, actually. But why _are_ you following me?”

Felicia’s smile widens, and she tears a piece off her muffin. “Because you’re cute and like to break into high-security laboratories to save cats.”

She takes a bite of her muffin, licking the escaped cinnamon off the tip of her thumb.

MJ blinks. Peter hesitates.

“You—think MJ is, what, on your side? She’s not a criminal!”

Felicia rolls her eyes. “Oh, pretty boy, I don’t have a side. But if we’re talking about people who hurt innocent animals and people who rescue them, then yes, I suppose we’re on the same _side_. We were at those labs for the same reason, after all.”

MJ leans forward in her chair, planting her feet firmly on the ground to avoid falling off the tilting legs.

“Hold up, you were there to save the cats? Not to steal Reighton’s research or whatever?”

“No. I was there for the same reasons as you, beautiful.”

MJ stares, and then says, “That’s… good.” She jumps when Peter kicks her under the table.

Felicia looks at them both with clear amusement and asks, “So, you two—is this a thing?”

Peter’s eyes widen and MJ blurts, “No! God, no, we’re just friends, that’s not—no.”

Felicia hums, nearly a goddamn purr, and says, “Good.” She moves quickly, suddenly taking hold of MJ’s wrist and running her fingers along the delicate skin, softly enough that something sticks in MJ’s throat and makes her stomach muscles tense up.

“What do you say to a date, MJ?”

 _Fuck_ , her voice is as smooth as milk chocolate melting on your tongue, it’s ridiculous.

“Sure,” MJ says, half-confidence and half-hope that her voice doesn’t squeak.

“MJ, I don’t think—” Peter starts, and MJ kicks him. Hard. He looks at her, his eyes wide. She’ll apologize later. Maybe.

“Now?” she prompts. “Peter, you have to get class anyway, right? I’ll call you later.”

Felicia stands up, coffee in one hand. “Works for me,” she murmurs.

They end up at MJ’s apartment.

In hindsight, okay, maybe it’s not the smartest idea to bring a known dangerous criminal who would maybe-possibly want to kill your best friend if she knew about his extracurricular hobbies back to your apartment, but in MJ’s defense, Felicia obviously already knew where she lived.

Also in her defense: she’s a virgin, and Felicia is really, really attractive, and who knew nails gently tracing lines up the bare skin of her arm was enough to make a girl weak in the knees? Or that the hot, wet curl of a tongue on her throat would make it hard to fucking breathe, and the blunt, hard pressure of teeth sinking into the skin was going to send a fucking electrical current straight from her neck to the soft spot between her thighs, holy _shit_.

She feels like a puppet on a string, but she can’t quite bring herself to care because it feels amazing.

Maybe it’s the fact that they both broke into an evil corporation’s laboratories to break out a bunch of cats in desperate need of rescue, but MJ is really, really turned on and it seems like as good a time as any to invite a woman back to her place for the first time.

Thankfully, her mom is working the night shift again.

Felicia pushes MJ onto the couch, smiling devilishly as she sinks to her knees and tugs MJ’s baggy jeans and underwear down her hips and thighs, throwing them off to the side so that she can spread MJ’s legs wide and press her face to the soft, sensitive place where they meet. When she flicks her tongue delicately between MJ’s folds, MJ gasps and arches her back, throwing her head back hard enough that she winces when it connects too-hard with the back of the couch.

She can’t help but grasp desperately at Felicia’s hair, tugging and holding on for dear life as Felicia practically attacks her cunt with her mouth and her tongue and, oh fucking fuck, her _teeth_ , grazing against her with that soft, blunt pressure that’s making something build fast like a goddamn avalanche. MJ feels like she can barely breathe, barely keep up, barely even keep her mind on track with what’s happening, shitshit _shit_.

Her stomach muscles quiver and shake as she comes back down from her first orgasm—well, the first one she’d had in thanks to someone else, anyway—and she draws in large gasps of breath. Felicia sits back just a few inches, her chin covered the evidence of MJ’s arousal, smiling wickedly. MJ is still clinging to her hair, making it a mess.

It’s lucky that Felicia doesn’t seem to mind the pulling tug, MJ belatedly realizes.

“Your hair is as soft as it looks,” she mutters, running her fingers through it carefully.

Felicia’s eyes crinkle slightly and she says, “Thank you.” She slides her fingers along the edge of MJ’s t-shirt, teasing. “Now, are you ready for round two?”

 ** _Fuck_**.

Two hours later, they’re both naked, relaxed and physically spent, half-falling asleep on each other while curled up on the couch. They’re watching Netflix, eating partially-burnt popcorn out of a bowl, and MJ is only a little distracted by the soft, pale breasts she’s currently resting her head between. She still feels sticky between her thighs despite Felicia’s best attempts to clean her up with her tongue followed by a real attempt with a wet washcloth from the bathroom.

Georgette finally slinks her way out of MJ’s bedroom to come jump up onto the couch and curl up right between their hips, all soft fur against naked skin. MJ nearly laughs about it, but Felicia runs a hand through Georgette’s fur, making the cat purr happily.

And, well, Georgette has always been a very good judge of character.

MJ rolls her eyes at Peter as he complains, not for the first time, that MJ _should not be dating the Black Cat_.

“I didn’t realize other people were allowed to dictate who I date. Question: does your aunt know you’re fucking a fifty-five-year-old?”

“Tony’s fifty-two—and I’m _not_ —we’re not—”

Ned looks up from his phone with wide eyes. “Dude, did you just call Tony Stark _Tony_? Are you actually dating him now? For real?”

Peter splutters. MJ goes back to her phone, texting Felicia that yes, she is free on Friday and is more than happy to go to a fancy party with her.

MJ wears the nicest dress she owns, a dark red silk-and-lace dress her mother had bought her for prom that MJ hadn’t ended up wearing due to the whole kidnapping fiasco (she’d ended up being saved by some crazy white dude who knew martial arts and had a glowing fist which was… just very telling about how crazy New York is sometimes) that doesn’t have a back and that’s barely held up by two very thin shoulder straps. She doesn’t have any matching shoes that fit—she did, once, but the heels mysteriously… broke—and so tugs on her combat boots instead. She does her hair up, trying to control the frizz in a way that will maybe not make her look like a kid from the ghetto going to a rich people party, and only sort of half-succeeds. Her matching black masquerade mask only half-hides it.

Whatever, it’s not like she wants to fit in or impress a bunch of rich one percent assholes anyway.

She’s just going as Felicia’s date.

It’ll be fun.

And Felicia had hinted that they might piss some of the high-and-mighty off while they’re there, so it might _really_ be fun.

Felicia picks her up in a sleek black Camaro. Felicia herself is dressed in a tight black dress with a slit up to the hip on one side, and she generously lets MJ notice, a small, sleek dagger strapped to the inside of her thigh. MJ’s too turned on by her entire outfit to be overly worried about why Felicia needs to bring a knife to a party,

Again, hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?

She ducks when Spider-Man sends a goon flying, his webbing sticking the guy to the wall.

The party-goers are screaming, running in every direction. One of the big glass walls has been blown out. There are men in black suits shooting guns every which way, and MJ isn’t entirely sure where Felicia disappeared to after she shoved MJ underneath a table that’s blocked by an upturned armchair and said, “Stay here, I’ll be back as soon as these trigger-happy suits realize they’ve run out of _luck_.”

“MJ!” Peter yells, swinging over. “Are you—” he has to swing away again, webbing up a gun and throwing it at another goon to take care of two idiots at the same time.

She spins around at the sound of something crunching and sees one of the suited men standing behind her, his gun pointed at her, and she reacts instantly by grabbing the vase on the floor next to her—she vaguely thinks it might be worth more than Felicia’s Camaro—and smashes it into the guy’s head.

He falls to the ground in a heap, MJ dropping the broken vase on top of him.

Felicia, a second later, drops next to her, still in her dress—though it’s slightly torn up and her masquerade mask is nowhere to be seen—and with a large, thin square case under one arm.

She reaches her free hand out to help MJ stand. “Ready to get out of here?”

MJ hesitates, looking back at where Peter is webbing up the last of the suits with guns to the wall.

He swings over a second later, landing next to MJ and Felicia.

“Put the painting down, Black Cat, and let the girl go,” he says.

Felicia sighs, straightening up. She pulls MJ up with her but lets go of her hand.

“Spider, spider, spider. What am I going to do with you?”

“How could you bring a girl on a date where you knew this was going to happen?” Peter asks, gesturing to the chaos all around them.

Felicia frowns. “Oh, but I _didn’t_ know the goons Hughes hired were going to be trigger-happy idiots. Mind you, they wouldn’t have even known I was stealing this lovely painting from their black market back auction if you hadn’t swung in to alert them to it.”

“ _You were stealing it!_ ”

“Is it really stealing if it’s already stolen?”

“Yes!” Peter yells, at the same time that MJ says, “That’s a good question, actually.”

Felicia smiles at her, and then says, “Oh, Spider. I _may_ have forgotten about the timed bomb about to go off down the hall. In case you were interested in stopping that.”

Peter’s spider-costume eyes go wide and his shoulders tense up.

“I’m _fine_ , Spider-Man,” MJ says. “Go stop the damn bomb.”

This time, they end up at Felicia’s place, and alright, maybe dicks aren’t so bad when they’re made of silicone and attached to a harness that’s strapped around a gorgeous woman’s waist. She didn’t even manage to take her dress off first.

MJ gets to pick the venue for their third date, and really, the protest in East Midtown in Manhattan was practically calling her name.

She puts on her combat boots and ripped skinny jeans, her t-shirt with the words **_FUCK THE PATRIARCHY!_** , and then shoves a bottle of pepper spray into her pocket before quickly throwing her hair up into a bun to make it harder to grab, just in case the protest goes south. She’s been to enough of them that she knows sometimes they do, whether the organizers mean for it to happen or not.

She meets Felicia on Lexington and hands her one of the signs that she and her mom had spent the day before making, the print bold and bright, completely in-your-face, and absolutely impossible to miss. Felicia laughs as they join the fray, holding up their signs for the photographers and the cops and politicians to fucking see, to read, to hear them and what they’re saying.

Obviously, things go south.

MJ doesn’t see what—or who—starts it, but suddenly the cops are shoving through the crowd and shooting tear gas and fucking rubber bullets out along the ground, and the crowd is shoving back, yelling, screaming, in anger, in fear, in confusion. MJ gets separated from Felicia, and at some point gets knocked to the ground. She feels stinging on her cheek and her arm and palms where the rocky gravel digs into her skin roughly, and she winces as someone steps on her in their panic before she manages to drag herself back up next to a stop sign.

She’s lost her sign, torn from her hands somewhere in the chaos.

She looks around to see if she can spot white hair anywhere, but all she sees are people running or attacking the cops who are either attacking back or shoving people to the side with their giant fucking plastic shields.

She hears a loud gunshot, followed by panicked screaming, and then feels someone grab her and yank her down against the ground. White hair fills her vision, and Felicia’s face a second later, eyes wide and searching as she says, “MJ, you’re alright? You aren’t hurt?”

MJ looks up at her. Her mouth has a smear of blood from where it looks like her lip got hit. There’s a smear of dirt on her chin. It’s the least put-together MJ has ever seen her, including the other night after stealing that painting and being involved in a gunfight.

MJ leans up and kisses her, reaching up to grab a fist full of her hair and hold her close. A moment of pause, and then Felicia is kissing her back, sliding a hand up to cup MJ’s cheek. She works her tongue into Felicia’s mouth, tasting the tang of iron from the blood on her cut lip, and Felicia moans against her, biting at her bottom lip softly, panting into her mouth when they part just half an inch to breathe.

People are still panicking all around them. They should move if they don't want to be trampled. MJ should call her mother, who’ll be worried when she hears about the protest going bad.

She tugs Felicia back down, kissing her one more time, before she gets her feet under her and stands back up.

“Your place or mine then?”

Felicia brushes a thumb over MJ’s cheek and MJ winces at the sharp pain. Felicia has blood on her thumb when she pulls her hand back.

“Whichever. We need to get you cleaned up.”

They go back to MJ’s apartment and Felicia meets her mom, which isn’t weird _at all_. But hey, her mom approves of Felicia’s protest wounds (including a nasty bruise on her chest and stomach that MJ hadn't seen earlier) and torn t-shirt (actually torn during the protest when some idiot had grabbed at her, rather than some sort of fashion choice) so hey, whatever works.

A month later, they all wind up in jail. And by _they_ , MJ means her, Felicia, _and_ Peter.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Peter says, slowly and repeatedly hitting his head against one of the cell bars.

MJ does feel mildly guilty for (accidentally) dragging him into this.

It’s her birthday, to start with, and she may have, admittedly, complained a lot, and loudly, about this museum downtown that’s hosting a display with a shit ton of Haitian indigenous artifacts that were _stolen_ and then sold to some asshole who’s put it out on loan to show it off and it’s just so fucking unfair. But the point is, Felicia—officially her girlfriend, because when your mom meets the girl who dragged you home from a protest-gone-riot, all bets are off—arranged a fun little museum heist for her birthday, and Peter had snuck in as a Bugle vlogger (weirdest part-time job ever, Peter, the Bugle _despises_ Spider-Man) on the same night (because that’s just their luck) to see if he could find evidence that the artifacts were, in fact, stolen (and get them returned if they were), and it all kind of exploded in their faces at the same time because Wilson Fisk is a fucking _dick_ , so here they are.

In a prison cell on her birthday.

Felicia is lying on her back on the bench, having exiled the dude that smells like pee who’d been there when they arrived to the other corner of the cell. MJ is tempted to lay down on top of her and ask for her to run her fingers through her hair and make her feel better about all of this, but.

Peter.

His aunt is going to kill him.

At least MJ’s mom half-expects to get a phone call that her daughter was caught trying to steal indigenous artifacts or spitting in a cop’s face at a protest or, whatever, setting cats free from their experimental lab rat prisons. Peter’s aunt can barely handle the fact that he’s going around in spandex and punching bad guys after dark. She is not going to handle him being arrested very well.

At least they didn’t catch them trying to steal anything.

The museum just thinks they’re dumb college kids trying to find a story to put on Instagram and were willing to trespass to get it.

“Uh,” she starts, “Peter.”

Peter looks at her blearily, and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re so melodramatic. It’s not the end of the world.”

“You… are an impossible person,” Peter says, after a minute of full-on gaping at her.

“Thank you for trying to prove the artifacts were stolen for my birthday.”

He blinks. “You’re welcome.”

“Don’t be mad at me and Felicia for trying to steal them.”

A pause, and then: “Uh, agree to disagree on that one? I think.”

MJ grins and says, “Works for me. Come sit down. They’re making us stew for a while and you’ll give yourself a concussion.”

“I will not,” he mumbles, but MJ jerks her head toward Felicia and he sighs and follows her anyway.

Felicia bends her knees to give Peter room to sit at the end of the bench and opens her arms for MJ to lie down curl up right next to her. She does, relishing the warmth of Felicia’s body heat. They’re keeping this particular holding cell awfully cold—she’d complain, except there aren’t any cops nearby close enough to hear.

“Too bad Spider-Man isn’t here,” she says. “He could just bend the bars and we’d be out of here.”

“He wouldn’t help a bunch of criminals escape jail.”

MJ is pretty sure Peter has actually broken himself, and others, out of jail cells before, but she keeps her mouth shut and lets him wallow in his misery. She closes her eyes and settles back into Felicia’s warmth, letting the soothing feeling of hands running through her hair relax her.

“I could always slice them apart,” Felicia murmurs, her eyes closed.

Peter glares at her, and MJ waves him off. Felicia didn’t mean it. Well, probably. It wouldn’t be worth the hassle.

When a cop finally comes by a little while later, offering them their _one phone call_ , MJ kicks Peter hard enough that he nearly falls off the bench. “Go call your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my—ugh, fine, I’ll call him. But he’ll never let me live it down.”

Felicia huffs a laugh against MJ’s hair, and MJ grins.

“Sounds like a real boyfriend to me,” Felicia says, sly.

Peter throws his hands up and walks out of the cell with the cop to make the phone call.

Stark shows up fifteen minutes later, laughing so hard that he’s half bent over as he signs the release forms for all three of them.

MJ sidles up next to him, Felicia’s hand in hers, and says, “Hey, be nice. Peter was just trying to prove that that museum was hosting stolen artifacts. He wanted it to be my birthday present if he could prove it.”

“Oh, trust me, I know,” Stark says. He motions with his hand for them all to follow him out the front of the station.

When they reach his car, a bright red-and-gold Audi (subtle must be his middle name), he stops and says, “Your friends need a ride, kid?” Then he glances at Felicia and does a double take. “Hey,” he says, scrutinizing, “you look familiar.” He reaches a hand up, tapping the frame of his glasses, and then snaps his fingers and says, “Ah, you’re Walter Hardy’s kid.”

Felicia’s grip tightens in MJ’s, and her smile turns cool.

Stark keeps talking, “Nice guy. Met him once at a party. Pretty sure he stole a twelve thousand dollar bracelet off of Stella Malkin. Not a complaint, by the way. That woman tried to roofie my drink.” He glances at a startled Peter and says, “Which is why I don’t leave my drinks unattended at parties anymore. Take notes.”

He puts an arm around Peter’s shoulders, tugging him in close. “So, can I give you two a ride?”

“No,” Felicia answers. “Thank you. I’ll get MJ back home myself.”

MJ thinks that might be best, all things considered. Felicia doesn’t talk about her family much. MJ didn’t even know her father’s name was Walter. Or that he’d been a thief too.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Peter,” MJ says as a farewell, and watches Peter’s face turn red when Felicia adds, “That still leaves plenty for you and Stark to get up to, don’t worry.”

They both laugh when they start off down the sidewalk.

“So,” Felicia says a block down the road as they wait for a cab to pull over, “how do you feel about a trip to Haiti for your birthday?”

MJ swings her head around to look at Felicia.

“What?”

Felicia smiles and shrugs, saying, “What? We have to return all those stolen artifacts, don’t we?”

Instead of a cab, a long silver Bugatti pulls up in front of them, one of those old ones designed pre-WWII, and MJ swallows back her surprise. The man driving is old himself, with hair practically as white as Felicia’s. “Well,” he drawls, “don’t make an old fox wait. Get in.”

It’s possible MJ spends the plane ride to Haiti with her head between Felicia’s thighs, tasting her and listening to every soft, gasping moan she lets out, fingers curling into MJ’s hair roughly, tugging her face closer, harder, her hips twitching with need.

MJ might, maybe, be a little bit in love.

.

**Author's Note:**

> **Outtake:**
> 
> So, when Felicia grins and says, “I thought we’d have a little adventure for your birthday. Test those thief skills of yours and steal back some artifacts,” MJ was fully, one hundred percent onboard. 
> 
> It just so happens that, naturally, Spider-Man shows up after one of the security guards manages to yell into his radio right before they can stop him by duct taping his mouth and tying him up with the other three guards.
> 
> (Maybe MJ’s fault. She’d been distracted by Felicia’s costume. Does it have to show off every single one of Felicia’s curves? It’s _distracting_. 
> 
> “It’s supposed to distract the guys on the other team,” Felicia murmurs, dragging MJ into a short, heated kiss. “And I just like it.” 
> 
> Well, MJ can’t complain that much, considering she also very much likes it. 
> 
> Not that Felicia will ever get her to wear anything like it ever. She’ll stick with her skinny jeans, baggy hoodies and combat boots, thank you very much.)


End file.
